Irish hackers get super happy

Paul Campbell writes, "Something great happened today" and elaborates -

"Using Twitter , Ana Nelson organised what she interchangeably named 'Sunday hacking' 'Coding brunch' 'Ruby hacking'. After a cosy lunch in one of the booths [at the New York Grind in Dublin], the gang of us traipsed over to the window and laptops came out. To be honest, I’ve not seen anything like it since I was inspired at Super Happy Dev House — an entire row of tables and back to back laptops and a gang of people, brought together, spontaneously, voluntarily and all for love and passion for what we were doing.

Between blogging, working on plugins and hacks, chatting about social networking and Twitter, the buzz was that truly undefinable magic that comes out of a bunch of familiar strangers getting together, by choice, to share their space and attention with each other, for fun, for community and most definitely not for any financial gain."

Don't read the rest of Paul's writeup unless you want to be infected by entrepreneurial passion. One of my new year's resolutions is to pop in to a few of these sessions and catch up with the Dublin gang. I'd also like to spin a few small ideas by them that I've had for a number of years but lacked the web design/development skills and resources to pursue.

Photo borrowed from Paul and Ana.

Comments

[Niall Larkin]

The funny thing about this meetup was that it had been mooted at least 10 times over the past 12 months. The more we tried to 'organise' it the less it seemed to happen. Then Ana started posting to the mailing group "Well, I'm going to be at X for breakfast with my laptop. Come along if you're around." For whatever reasons, it never really happenened even though there was clear expressions of interest in the mailing group.

Last Sunday though started again with a similar announcement from Ana and the usual 3-4 responses on the mailing list. But this time a group of over 10 people turned up and had a great time. I think the location played a part. Also quite a few turned up when they heard the buzz happening live via twitter.

This was great because the meetup had the energy of a spontaneous gathering that is impossible to replicate in an organised meetup.

So kudos to Ana ( Twitter @ananelson ), who disorganised this meetup beautifully :)

[James Corbett]

I think the dynamics how something like that comes about make for fascinating analysis. We had a similar problem in Limerick two years ago when we started up Limerick Geek Meetups where it was often just two or three of us, like Conn, Bernie and myself. But we took Dave Winer's advice on the organization of unconferences - don't be put off by small numbers/interest, even if it's only two people just go along, have an interesting discussion, take a few photos and then come back and blog about it. Then rinse and repeat in a months time, and the following month, etc. Which is what we did. Sure enough other people started getting interested and coming along and so when the idea of Open Coffee was launched we had a ready-made group already doing much the same thing so we just adopted that label instead.

So I'd give similar advice to any people trying to start something similar. And if you have a following of like-minded, geographically local people on Twitter it makes it all the easier nowadays.

Next up - coworking flashmobs like Mike Butcher is writing about :)

[john]

hiya ladys and gents hacking is something ive been very intrested in for many years but only recently have i takin abig intrest in it but its like an expansion of the mind in the way it can drive some one to educate themselfs with fun no exams no teachers no having to prove ur have a brain to any one i would love to hear back from u guys and girls as to what is goin on rite now with ur group yours faithfully mr munster